1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to computer network search engines, and more particularly to search engines for performing online monitoring activities.
2. Related Art
Over the past several years, there has been a large growth in the number of computers, and thus people, connected to the global Internet and the World-Wide Web (WWW). This collective expansion allows computer users to access various types of information, disseminate information, and be exposed to electronic (e-commerce) commerce activities, all with a great degree of freedom. E-commerce includes entities such as large corporations, small businesses, individual entrepreneurs, organizations, and the like who offer their information, products, and/or services to people all over the world via the Internet.
The rise in use of the Internet, however, also has a negative side. Given the Internet's vastness and freedom, many unscrupulous companies, organizations and individuals have taken the opportunity to profit by diverting customer traffic, misusing product information, and mis-associating their product or company with others. For example, it has been estimated that millions of pages employ tags and text designed to divert searchers to their sites when the Internet users actually searched for something else. These diversions and incidents of misinformation cause a loss of business. Also, an individual, company, organization, or the like may be concerned with other violations such as the illegal sale of their products, or the sale of inferior products using their brand names. Furthermore, an individual, a company, an organization, or the like may be concerned with false information (i.e., “rumors”) that originate and spread quickly over the Internet, resulting in the disparagement of the entity. Such entities may also be interested in gathering data about how they and their products and/or services are perceived on the Internet (i.e., a form of market research).
Additionally, entities need to know what kind of presence they have on the Internet. Entities need to have a way of measuring their products, brands, etc. against those of other entities, either in the same market or across markets. Without such information, entities would not know their competition, opportunities, and/or how their market is changing.
In order to compete with the above-described aspects of the Internet, entities are currently forced to search Internet resources (i.e., Web sites, File Transfer Protocol (FTP) sites, newsgroups, chat rooms, etc.), by visiting over thousands of sites in order to discern activities relevant to their business operations. Such searching is currently done either by hand or using commercial search engines. Each of these methods is costly because a great amount of time is required to do such searching—time that detracts from positive, profit-earning activities. Adding to the frustration of discerning relevant activity is the fact that commercial search engines are updated infrequently and typically limit the resulting number of sites (i.e., “hits”) that any given search request returns. Furthermore, the task of visiting each site to determine whether there is indeed relevant activity and if so, the extent and character of it, also demands a great deal of time.
Therefore, in view of the above, what is needed is a system, method and computer program product for analyzing e-commerce competition. E-commerce competition includes the products and services of other entities, the Internet presence of other entities, the relationships of entities across product and service areas, etc. Such an analysis of e-commerce competition would provide relevant market information and feedback to an entity so that it may detect and prioritize its online business efforts. Further, what is needed is a system, method and computer program product that searches the Internet's vast resources for data relevant to the entity's activities and its associates and produces a detailed, customized report of relevant activity affecting the entity.